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She’s not aware of what she’s doing at first, but it doesn’t take her long to realize.
She doesn't realize after she picks herself back up (because what else is there to do?) out of that chasm in the ground, arduously climbing up, up, up — left foot, pull, right foot, pull, then something else pulls — fuck, that hurts. Of course it would, that’s where she — shut up, don’t cry like you didn’t deserve it. Don’t think, don’t think. Flashes of her face, a stranger’s face, glaring down at you like she hasn’t seen anything more pathetic. Stop crying, you motherfucker. It’s already hard enough to get out of this godamn pit without your eyes being too blurry to see the next rung in front of you, without your legs being too weak to hold yourself up.
Vi doesn't know where she's going, exactly. All she knows is that she can't stay here.
She doesn't realize after she stumbles her way through the streets of Zaun, her battered uniform shirt long discarded — because even light-headed and lost, she knows the weight of it, of what it would mean to wear it through these streets — what used to be her streets before she betrayed them and everything she was. If she was less of a coward, she would’ve kept it on and let the people of Zaun treat her exactly the way she deserved, the way her younger self would’ve treated her now, an enforcer who poisoned their air and terrorized their people.
But she’s not, and she’s never been, so she leaves the uniform with the rest of herself, lost in the Temple of Janna.
She doesn't even realize after she’s in nothing but her bandages; her familiar, beat-up wraps and the ones that she’d bound herself with under her uniform shirt that very same morning.
(Bright laughter, like a twinkling bell, for the first time in weeks. You've managed to make it out of a lot of fights with all your insides, but nothing has ever sounded like more of a victory to you. Vi! What are you doing?
What do you mean?
Are you hurt?
What are you talking about, Cupcake?
Another giggle, bright and beautiful. I wasn't aware gauze was the new substitute for undergarments where you're from.
A pause. I just — I don’t like the way I look, wearing this. I thought this might help.
A beat of silence, of stillness. Then, the tender kiss of her fingertips on your shoulder, her delicate but strong fingers taking the other end of the winding fabric out of your hand. With her fingers on your neck like that, can she feel the frantic thrumming of your heart under her hand, beating like a caged bird? Can she feel what it means, that you’re letting yourself be touched like this, like something fragile?
Here, let me.
You let her finish wrapping your chest, tight and secure but not enough to hurt. Holding yourself still like this, letting someone else put all your armor on? It's somehow the easiest and hardest thing you've ever done.
There's something ephemeral about this moment, some part of yourself knowing it's already over before it's begun. But you've always been worried like that, expecting good things to disappear as soon as they come. Maybe, just this once, in the comfort of her gentle arms and her stupid, big, fancy house, you can allow yourself to hope.
You're just overthinking it, Vi. Don't kill a good thing before it starts.)
She doesn't realize when she manages to stumble deeper into the Lanes, past the Last Drop (or the memory of it), past all her old haunts. Blearily, she thinks she's a ghost, haunting her old home and perpetually restless, unable to atone or find enough closure to be at peace. Fuck, she needs to stop thinking; she's no good at it anyway.
What she needs is a stiff drink. Then she'll figure out what to do.
Eventually, she finds herself in front of some club with a blaring neon sign that she can hardly look at, much less read. She doesn't recognize it, but that hardly means anything after spending seven years in a concrete box. Craning her neck up at it, for a moment, clarity cuts through the fog.
Vi rakes a shaky hand through her hair. God, she shouldn't be here. She needs to — she needs to — well, she doesn't know what she needs anymore, but it can't be this.
She's about to turn away when she sees a figure leaning against the wall of the club, looking at her. At almost half her height, the small, unimposing figure leers at her up and down and says, expectedly, “You look lost, girl. Need some help finding your way?”
On any other night, she would’ve sneered and knocked this guy’s lights out just for looking at her like that, but now? She tries to find the place where her fire used to be and finds flickering embers.
“Fuck off,” She mumbles, only finding the strength to speak on autopilot.
He gives her another look, more appraisingly this time. His beady eyes take in her blood-soaked wraps, her clenched fists, and her well-defined shoulders, unusually exposed in the dim light. Unexpectedly, he asks, “You know how to fight, kid?”
Vi blinks dazedly. Almost doesn’t know how to answer. Finally says the words, rolling them around in her dry mouth: “Yeah. Yeah, I know how to fight.”
“Come with me.”
Vi sways on her feet, unmoving as he disappears behind the bar. Just the notion goes against all her better instincts, the ones that kept her alive this whole time. Is she really going to follow this guy through a dark alley?
A better question, one that rings true: what does she have to lose?
Vi is sixteen, and she’s figured out that it’s easier to brace herself for getting the shit kicked out of her if she knows that it’s coming.
At this point, avoiding it is impossible. She sure as shit tried in the early days, when she still told everyone that would bother listening to her that she didn't belong here, when she shouted and spat and pounded her fists against the bars and said hey, where's my fair fucking trial, you motherfuckers!
She tried only fighting back, not letting those bastards think they could push her around, but not trying to start anything. Not that she was afraid, or something, but this was Stillwater. She's heard the stories from Vander and the other people of the undercity, in hushed whispers and dreadful warnings: this is the kind of place people don't come back from.
Besides, she had more important things to worry about (protect the family, protect powder) and she needed to survive and have all her working parts to do them.
And Vi was going to survive. She was going to see Powder again. She was going to make everything right again. She was certain of it, simply because there was no other option for her.
The first time they barge into her cell and beat her for no reason, she thinks it must be a one-off thing, some fucked up version of initiation for the fresh meat. But then it happens a second time, then a third, and by the fifth time, something vital within her cracks right down the middle.
She can hardly stand enough to make it to the cafeteria the morning after, so she doesn't eat that day. It's there, starving and curled up in a miserable ball in the darkness of her cell, that she knows she can't go on like this. She's not going to make it, and she needs to fucking make it. If for nothing else, then for Powder, because everyone else is — everyone else is —
Vi has to press the back of her head so hard into the metal bars that her head starts to pound. She squeezes her eyes shut, willing herself not to cry by sheer force of will.
I will not let them have this. I will not give them the satisfaction.
She decides right then: if they're going to kick the shit out of her anyway, she won't take things lying down like a godamn dog.
She learns that if she starts fights with the other intimates, spits on the warden’s shoes every so often, starts the occasional riot — she knows what’s coming next, knows it by the falling of heavy footsteps and the sickening clang of that iron-wrought staff on broken concrete.
It's easy enough to instigate. Her anger is an instinctual, primal thing, inexhaustible even when her hope dwindles. Like a reflex, the second anyone looks at her funny, her hand curls into a fist as she clenches it hard enough to hurt, holding herself very carefully still. She listens to the wounded animal in her mind that screams at her not to just take it: to stand her ground, to fight back any way she can, no matter how futile and hopeless it seems.
The pain is a good break from the monotony of her life, the adrenaline pumping her veins full of liquid life, of fire, of the will to fight — to fucking live, even when she had no stomach for it. The pain reminds her what she's fighting for, what she lost, what she deserves. Getting into fights often was also an effective way to mask when she would actually interrogate Silco's goons with a ferocious purpose, demanding, where the fuck is my sister? what did you do with her? enough that the guards started to think the powder she kept asking for was some kind of drug that she was cripplingly addicted to. They weren't half fucking wrong.
Every chance she got to duck under the wardens' clumsy swings or drive a brutal fist into one of their guts was another opportunity for her to get stronger, strong enough to one day escape this place and finally, finally see her sister again. Apologize for calling her — for calling her that. To be her big sister again, just like things used to be. To honor Vander's last fucking words to her and do something good with her miserable life.
I'm going to survive, She would tell herself feverishly, when her body was nothing but a taut line of agony. Powder, Powder, Powder.
Anything is better than — than the first time when she was fifteen and angry and split open with grief. It's better than that first night when she had finally been able to sleep and suddenly —
— rough hands pulling her up, trying to see through bleary eyes and a blinding light shined directly in her face, no don’t touch me, a knee in her gut, a boot crushing her hand, wait no stop —
She doesn’t keep her guard down anymore. Well, not the kind that protects her face.
After all, you don't survive by staying on the defense.
Vi is twenty-three and she knows it’s easier to brace herself for getting the shit kicked out of her if she knows that it’s coming.
Before her first fight, they asked her what she wanted to be called in the ring. She didn't care, so she said Violet. They looked a little skeptical at that, probably expecting her to say some dumb shit like Skullcrusher, but she didn't change her mind.
She's not stupid — she knows what an alias is — but she doesn't have the time to explain to these bozos that her name means nothing to anyone anymore. She has nothing to protect. She's just Violet.
Afterward, she manages to pinch a tin of some unknown oil-black substance off some unlucky fighter. In the sickly light of the meager new dwelling she's allowed, Vi rakes whatever it is through her hair and smudges it across her face until she looks unrecognizable enough to herself. Just another nameless stranger looking for a violent way to forget about their life.
When she first gets into the pit, she's blinded by the harsh fluorescent lights and deafened by the cacophonous clamor of a hungry crowd waiting for blood. She's introduced as an underdog, as the reigning champion's next opponent. The bell rings, and she plants her feet and squares her shoulders.
Vi takes a deep breath. She opens her eyes — wait, is that the guy she's fucked up twice already — and pow!
She lays that motherfucker out with one hit. The crowd goes fucking wild. Vi could get used to this.
After that, time blurs. She wins her bitchin' new leather jacket in a game of arm-wrestling that gets a little unfriendly and crows, who's the underdog now! The double-headed dog bearing its teeth stares back at her impassively. Vi's joy sputters to a stop.
She actually starts winning. She ducks, bobs, weaves, and hits fast and hard. One night, she looks up, and the crowd is a sea of red tickets. Vi realizes the crowd is roaring for her, and it's fucking intoxicating. She roars right back, the adrenaline singing in her veins giving shape to her lifeless body, and thinks, god, she missed feeling alive.
This — the feeling of bone breaking under her hand; the rhythmic, brutally familiar dance of fighting tooth and nail and with everything she has; the precision and certainty of a well-aimed fist, her oldest and most reliable friend — this is singular, uncomplicated, and as constant as the steady thrum of her heart.
She shouldn’t have tried to be anything else. Back in Stillwater, she learned to be ferocious, fearsome, baring her teeth like a rabid dog until everyone knew not to fuck with her. Vi became strong because she had to be, tucked all her softness away so deep nothing would be able to touch it, and wore her jagged edges like armor until it became a second skin, until —
Until that precious, awe-striking moment when she let herself be exposed, let the soft underbelly she worked so hard to protect be seen by someone for the first time in ages. When my parents were still alive, me and Powder used to share a bed like this...
Fat fucking load of good that did her, in the end. She was getting soft in her time Topside, months of her life reduced to nothing more than the distant, dreamy memory of the first moment her body wasn’t wracked with some kind of pain in — well, as long as Vi can remember.
She hated it.
Eventually, all her old scabs rip open and it feels awfully, unbearably right in a way her life hasn’t for a long time. When she looks down at her bloody and bruised hands, she can almost pretend that they haven’t been capable of anything else but splitting open skin. She can almost pretend they’ve never been gentle, never cradled, never held.
The only thing better than the satisfying crunch of someone's bones breaking under her hand is the sweet, alluring dull of liquor.
She only starts drinking after her fights, as a way to numb her smarting bruises, but she soon finds that if she drinks just enough her mind blissfully empties. Lost under strobing lights and the pumping bass she can feel in her bones, her thoughts become murky and slow. She doesn't have to think about the fact that she's wasting the rest of her life away in this place, that she has no plan and no direction, that she has nothing and no one left. As soon as she tries to catch that train of thought, it slips right through her fingers like sand, so fast she can hardly remember what was making her so upset in the first place.
There is nothing more addicting than forgetting.
That is, until, she starts catching glimpses of her.
Like some sick fucking joke, the drinking stops her spiraling thoughts but only seems to make the hallucinations worse. It starts with little things, so fleeting Vi barely notices — a peek of midnight blue hair disappearing through the crowd, a flash of a frilled uniform skirt, and worst of all, her soft smile when she looked at her like something that could be loved. At first, Vi avoids looking at her as often as she can, shaking her head violently and turning away sharply whenever she gets even a glimpse of her. It's not real, it's not fucking real.
Then, pathetically, Vi starts — looking. Starts staring. Starts dancing with her in the club when she's so drunk she can hardly stand, looking as beautiful and revering as the day she saved Vi's life. Please let me have this, Vi begs silently, feeling disgusting and weak and helpless. Please.
At least Vi can't hurt this version of Caitlyn. She can't ruin her, can't stain her life with her bruised and bloody hands. She's not fucking real.
It’s when she starts etching the walls of her matchbox room to keep track of time — almost without thinking, by force of habit — that it finally clicks.
The daily fights. The routine. Her life confined to four walls and a threadbare mattress. It's on her terms, at least, but once she realizes it's impossible to ignore.
It makes her laugh to herself for the first time in months, humorless and sardonic. It’s like she never fucking left that godamn cell. Everyone and everything changes, it seems, but her.
And there's Loris. Loris is — well, he's a pain in her fucking ass.
She didn't expect to see him again, here of all fucking places, but he stands out like a sore thumb, too soft-looking and kind for this hellhole. He talks to her after one of her fights and says something about her having a lot of potential, and she can't help but laugh right in his face, harsh and mean. You don't know what you're talking about, she spits, and you don't know me.
And still, he stays. He drinks with her after her fights, stays lucid enough to drag her back to her shithole of a room, and pushes her off the other patrons who get a little too close before she almost knocks their fucking teeth in. He's good enough company, but nothing more. Vi knows, by now, what happens when she's selfish, what happens when some unlucky soul has the misfortune of knowing her.
(She thinks of Jinx as the insane one, but what does it make her if she does the same thing over and over again, expecting things to end differently?)
Then, Vi starts losing more than winning. She stumbles, trips, moves like she's made of molasses, and hits slow and clumsy. She starts taking more hits than she lands, starts drinking even more to numb the pain. Loris starts getting frustrated, starts to actually leave every time she pushes him away. Then one day, she looks for him at their usual spot at the dingy bar and he's not there.
Good fucking riddance, Vi tells herself. She couldn't stand to see the disappointed look on his face whenever she drank past her limit and started fighting the other patrons, looking too much like someone else through her unfocused eyes. Someone who taught her to work on her guard, to keep her heart good, who she let down over and over and over — fuck, she can't think about that. Where's that godamn drink she ordered?
She likes it better this way. With no one to look out for, and no one to look out for her.
It goes like that for some time. Wake up. Get ready for her fight. Smear on her makeup over old black streaks. Cough up blood-mucus-bile in her dirty sink. Eat something if she can stomach it. Drink until the hurt goes away, until everything slips and slides pleasantly. Wrap her hands and check her chest, tight and secure enough for her ribs and wrists to ache. Try not to get the shit kicked out of her. Fail. Drink some more at the club until the hurt and midnight black hair and that godamn gap-toothed smile goes away. Blackout. Wake up. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat.
(One night, she makes the mistake of not drinking enough; of being too sick to keep anything down, and thinking maybe, maybe. Maybe this is the day she gets her shit together. Maybe getting the shit kicked out of her every day gets old. Maybe some small, pathetic part of her is tired of being hurt — the part of her that never knows how to stay down, the part of her that smiles with blood in its teeth, the part that never learned patience — and the thought crosses her mind: what is she going to do now? What does she even have left to go back to?
Suddenly, she misses Caitlyn. She misses her with such stunning force that it physically aches like a blow, aches enough for her to curl into a tight ball, blinking past tears. She misses Powder. She misses the way she looked up to Vi, the pride on her face when she'd finish one of her gadgets, her wind-chime laugh. She misses wiping her tears away and whispering, No monster's going to get you when I'm here. She misses Vander. Mylo. Claggor. Ekko. She misses Mom and Dad. The way people used to be able to count on her. She misses the feeling of flying across rooftops, the force of the wind in her face almost suffocating her. She misses feeling invincible, like she could change the world with nothing but her bloody fists. She misses being Vander's prodigy — she misses being Vander's daughter. She misses being someone's sister. She misses having someone to look out for, someone to trust her to protect them. She spent so much time desperately trying to hold on to the things that mattered most to her, carved out pieces of herself just to make them stay, and they all slipped through her fingers, one by one. What the fuck is the point of her if she can't protect anyone she cares about?
Is this what she has to look forward to? Mourning for the rest of her life?
She's crying hard enough for it to hurt, now, deep echoing sobs being wrenched out of her painfully. She can never go back. She will never have any of that again. She fought so hard to live, and for what? To keep losing, to keep failing, to keep poisoning everything she tries to fix? Fuck, she can't — she can't —
Next time, she fights through the nausea rolling through her like a tidal wave just to get one more drink down. Only eats so she can stomach the alcohol. Sometimes, she lets herself pretend the warmth coursing through her veins isn’t the liquor but instead the caress of Caitlyn's calloused fingertips. Anything, anything not to think again.)
She thinks she died a long time ago, in every way that mattered. Now she was just waiting for her body to catch up.
When Vi finally finds the strength to pry open her bleary, sweat-stuck eyes — god, her head hurts like a mother fucker. Is that fucking whistling? — she doesn't expect to see Jinx.
At least, not Jinx looking so real.
"Looking good, Sis," Jinx says, the corner of her mouth curling into a small smile. Under her right eye, painted backward, is the word Jinx scrawled with Vi's black makeup.
Vi doesn't think. She blinks and her hand is around Jinx's throat, squeezing with brutal strength. Jinx spasms and struggles underneath her, eyes wide with shock.
"I don't want to hear another word out of your mouth," Vi growls. What the fuck does she think she's doing, showing her face here? How many things has she taken from Vi? Did she come here to rub more salt in the wound? To gloat?
“It's Vander,” Jinx chokes out (Vi chokes out of her, more accurately).
How dare she? Vi slams a fist into the wall next to Jinx's face, hard enough to make it rattle.
"I'm not falling for another one of your tricks." Vi spits.
"He's alive," Jinx gasps.
What?
Vi can't help it — the words tear open the deep, barely healed wound inside of her. She hesitates, the air momentarily stolen from her lungs, but shakes the shock away. No, no. Don't fall for it.
She squeezes the hand around Jinx's throat imperceptibly harder. Jinx's heartbeat races under her hand rabbit fast, a staccato thump thump thump. "We both know that's bullshit."
A purple-tinged tear trickles out of Jinx's eye, forced out by Vi's own hand. Suddenly, Vi remembers being the one to brush away Powder's tears, remembers when the sight of her pain was as bad as her own. Vi blinks, and suddenly all she can see is Powder's tear-streaked face under her hand, begging her to stay.
Vi yanks her hand away like she's been burned.
Jinx crashes to her knees, coughing and spluttering. "He needs our help," She manages to say between ragged lungfuls of air.
Her ears start to ring. Through the dense, rage-filled fog of her mind, a distant memory comes to life; warm and gentle and full of light: What I can say is that she still needs you. They all do.
God, it's been so long since she’s been fucking needed. These days, she hardly remembers what it was like to be wanted, not that she doesn’t get cruelly reminded enough (midnight blue hair, pristine uniform, the gentle caress of her finger on your cheek).
“I can prove it," Jinx continues, breathing harshly and looking up at Vi imploringly.
Seriously? She doesn't know what to say, so she says nothing, breathing hard as she stares at her fractured reflection in her shattered mirror. She looks unrecognizable. She looks like herself.
Looking at her reflection, Vi mutters, “Why should I trust you?”
“I could ask you the same thing, sister,” Jinx spits, like the word leaves a sour taste in her mouth. She finally gets to her feet, brushing the dirt from Vi's filthy floor off her knees. She fixes Vi with an unimpressed, irritated expression. “Don’t you think I would’ve canned you before, instead of waiting for your drunk ass to wake up?”
And — well, she had a point there.
"Listen," Jinx says, still rubbing her throat and suddenly looking anywhere but at Vi. "I'm not going to make you come. You can stay here, getting the crap kicked out of you every night, if you really want to."
She takes a deep, painful-sounding breath. Vi lets her continue, a nameless emotion stirring within her.
"But, it's — it's Vander. If there's even a chance that we could get him back, don't you want to try?"
The ringing in her ears gets louder, drowning out any thought. There's that feeling again, the one that Vi can't name but burns in her chest like someone lit a match between her ribs.
What I can say is that she still needs you. They all do. Powder's face, Powder's smile, Powder's laugh. You're a jinx! Caitlyn holding her face in her hands gently, Caitlyn's desperate face in the rain, Caitlyn falling into her arms like she knows Vi will catch her. The kiss they shared before she lost the last good thing in her life, soft and gentle and terribly, awfully real. Despite it all, I can tell. You have a good heart. Vander's strong hands cupping her face. You've got a good heart. Don't ever lose it. No matter how hard the world tries to break you.
Jinx's eyes search her face, not with trust or compassion but with something close to curiosity. That look — it changes her whole face. For a moment, Jinx looks so startlingly like Powder that it steals the air from Vi's lungs. Don't you want to try?
At the end of the day, it comes down to this: she's still needed. However grudgingly, however little, she still is. She can't turn away from that, no matter how hard she tries. It's not the way she was made. Spending seven years in Stillwater subsisting on only the hope that she might be reunited with her sister again, that she might be her big sister again, has wired it in her; that need to protect, to be strong enough to never fail at it again.
She's so tired of failing, of fucking up this one thing. Maybe, maybe.
There, flickering to life in the darkness, so fleeting she hardly recognizes it: hope. She thought she could never have what she lost ever again, but her little sister is standing in front of her, telling her that, as little as Vi actually believes it, their dad might be alive.
Well, fuck. She never did know when to quit.
Vi sighs, gripping the edges of her sink so tightly it turns her knuckles white before she finally turns away from herself. She finds her leather jacket, shrugs it on, and slides on the Atlas Gauntlets one by one with the hiss of a hundred gears sliding into place. Jinx watches her walk around her room with a raised eyebrow, like she can't quite work Vi out.
"Fine," Vi huffs, heart in her throat. "Lead the way."